


bits of three

by theredhoodie



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Canon, F/M, Season 1, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:04:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2538683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The innermost thoughts of Kate Fuller during her interactions with one Richie Gecko.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bits of three

**Author's Note:**

> Just a trio of drabbles I wrote during psych class because who really pays attention during college lectures, am I right?

I.

Kate's mind buzzed with the words from Richard, the certainty in his tone and the blunt way he delivered the lines. Who did he think he was? He was a stranger and he knew nothing about her except—

She told him things. Not specific things, yet he  _knew_ , he knew that her mind was filled with suspicion about her mother's death and her father's involvement. He knew things he shouldn't have and Kate couldn't believe that she opened up to him so easily.

"Sometimes it's easier to talk to strangers," he said, and it proved true. Kate was never going to see him again and she bared her soul to him, her doubts and thoughts that she couldn't talk to her daddy or Scott about.

Kate clutched her towel around her waist and her cell phone in her hand, and padded upstairs to the second floor to the door marked in angry black as 207. Taking a deep breath, she nodded her head and pushed the door in. Before she could even make sense of the sight of her father and brother sitting on the bed and a strange man in front of them, her family yelled for her to run.

She gasped and twisted around, only to be hit in the chest with an invisible anvil.

"Was it something I said?" Head tilted, that mysteriously kind look in his eyes replaced by something far more sinister. It was Richard from the pool, the not-a-bible-salesman, blocking her path and reaching for the gun at his waist.

Kate's lips parted, a stab like betrayal hitting her heart. Here was this  _stranger_  who had gotten her to open up, to lie out her woes and innermost thoughts. Her mind whirled and tried to catch up.

She moved back slowly, not fighting back. Not only was he much bigger than her, but she was close to fury and was doing her best to stay calm. She wanted to burst, to yell "How could you do this?!" but she didn't know exactly  _what_  was going on, so she refrained. She was near frozen with a mixture of fear, betrayal and confusion.

II.

If she didn't do something, Scott was going to pull out that gun and get them all killed. Kate didn't want to die in an RV at the border to Mexico. She didn't want to die period, not for many years. She wanted to die old and surrounded by her family. She wanted to die with a smile on her face and be welcomed into Heaven to be with her Momma.

Scott didn't say anything, just barely shook his head and moved his eyes from her to Richie and back again, silently telling her that he was going to make a move if she didn't. She didn't want to. Richie scared her. He almost killed Scott, she had seen the flash of the gun and heard the brothers angrily talking between themselves when Scott showed her the gun in his bag.

This was all totally insane. Her family were hostages, her brother was hiding a gun and she still couldn't get over how stupidly naïve she had been to  _trust_  Richie back when she first met him. Maybe it wasn't trust at all. Maybe he just exerted some sense of calm that made words tumble from her mouth until she had shown him the parts of her mind that she had been keeping close and secret for weeks now.

Kate shook her head. Scott widened his eyes and nodded again, telling her to talk to Richie, to smooth him over so that Scott could...she didn't want to think about what her brother was planning. She didn't want anyone here to die.

She glanced over at Richie, who was peering out between the curtains at the cars idling around them. She pressed her lips together and looked at him, fully turning her head toward him as she spoke.

"Can I ask you something?"

The words broke the silence and she could feel Scott's eyes boring holes into her. She wouldn't mess this up. She just wanted to diffuse the tension. And maybe, just maybe, if she tugged on that odd little string that she swore connected her and Richie now—ever since he touched her hand and told her what she was thinking—her family would be let go.

Richie, however, breathed out annoyance with her intrusion on whatever dark smothering thoughts he was having. He was taken aback by her actually speaking to him—that was evident by the slow way he moved and the odd way he looked at her, like she was a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out.

Good. She wanted that. She wanted to use that to her advantage. He was proving himself to be just as human as any of her family, no matter how strange he acted or what odd things he said and  _knew_. So Kate continued on, ignoring the gun he pointed at her and just keeping her eyes on his to ignore that very fact.

She spoke about the things she knew best. She talked about God and faith, feeling the slightly cool metal of her cross against her throat and wondering if he believed in anything. She kept on talking, offering up the only thing she could to make a connection with him: her hand, flat against the table, and her faith, worn over herself like armor.

Her voice may have wavered, but she had his attention, and she steadily grew less afraid. He watched her in near wonder as she spilled out her thoughts once again to him, this time permeated by words written in ancient tomes. Kate knew he didn't believe in much, not in the way he was so hesitant. He could scarcely believe that a simple teenage girl like herself could even think to offer someone like him, who had lied and betrayed her trust, any form of salvation.

"I promise it won't hurt," she said softly, tilting her head back and looking over at him expectantly. She didn't know what Scott was planning; she didn't want to know. She kept thinking  _I don't want anyone to die_  over and over during the pauses in the conversation.

She waited, that string taunt between them, and she offered him her hand, just like before. It was a show of faith, because she knew that God wouldn't let anything bad happen to her. He had to see that she was still pure and true to Him, and that she believed every word she was saying.

Richie tucked his gun away and Scott shifted ever so slightly beside her, but Kate ignored him. She gave Richie the smallest look of encouragement, his fingers extending toward hers slowly, like he was scared her touch would burn. All this talk of God and belief had shaken him. Or so Kate guessed, with the way he was reacting.

She couldn't help but smile softly, despite the bitter sting of his past misdeeds still rattling around her brain, when the pads of their fingers touched. There was no going back and Richie curled his fingers into hers. His hands were dangerous, big and warm and calloused just like earlier at the pool, and Kate closed her eyes. If she just closed her eyes and prayed, they would all get out of this safely.

III.

"Kate!" She heard him behind her, following both with his words and his body. Kate's heart thrummed in her chest, matching the burst of music and conversation that filled her ears when she stepped out of that little room. She wove through tables, glancing over her shoulder just once. She saw a blur of him, glasses and stark white shirt.

Kate pushed through the crowd. Her eyes searched for any place to disappear into. She saw a door with a crude carving of a female form attached and took a chance. She pushed the door open and slipped inside.

It was a bathroom with a dirty sink and two stalls. The door muffled the music, but made it all the easier to hear that someone was having sex in one of the stalls. Kate ignored it and squinted at the murky mirror.

Why had she  _done_  that? She had only gone to talk Richie into letting her and her family go. She had no intention of kissing him—that just sort of happened when the situation presented itself. She surprised herself as much as Richie, but she still knew what she was doing. She was pleading with him for freedom.

He said that he didn't want her to leave. She didn't know why he wanted her to stay, or why he said all of those things. She knew that she had some twisted connection to him that was undeniable. He had to know it, too. He was smart; he could very well have been playing with her.

Kate sniffed, ignoring the unnecessarily loud exclamations behind her, and twisted on the faucet. The water was cold and Kate shoved her hands under the stream, trying to shake away the fuzzy, hijacked feeling lingering in her mind.

"Set me free," she said. She didn't know where it came from and she couldn't think properly about it, like someone was holding her still and she couldn't push through to take control of her own vocal cords in that moment.

"Why did you say that?" Richie asked, a flash of confusion and intrigue behind those lenses flickering with the dim lights of the room.

Kate struggled to take control again, but found herself unable, like she was fighting a ghost. It wasn't that she didn't  _want_  to be close to him and she was no longer scared of him, but she did not like saying things she wasn't supposed to.

She shook her head and tried to say "I don't know" but they came out as barely a whisper. He was already leaning in and kissing her again, as if that simple act would answer all their questions.

And there was Kate, slamming back into her own self, shaking off that ghost that had overtaken her voice. Sitting there, sharing a kiss with a known murderer wasn't anywhere near as frightening to her as Kate's disembodiment.

That's why she ran and that's why she was listening to someone's back bang against the metal stall wall in a dirty bathroom in a strange strip-bar in Mexico.

Sucking in a breath, Kate turned off the water and dried her hands by dragging them through her hair. She moved toward the door just as the lock on the stall door shook. She bolted out of the bathroom and lingered in the dark corner until some old guy came up and tried to put his hands on her. She stomped on his foot and shoved him aside, slipping through the crowd until she got to the edge of a small gathering around where people were throwing knives. People named Richie and Seth.

Fully in control of herself again, and determined to appeal to the brothers and do everything in her power to get her family free, Kate pulled back her shoulders and held her chin up, slipping through the crowd as a scantly clad woman left mumbled obscenities under her breath and cradling her arm.

"Why don't we make it interesting?"


End file.
